The Alchemist’s Code

by Martin Rua

  I smiled.

  “Come on, Lorenzo – the Russian was just having a bit of fun with you.”

  In the meantime I had almost arrived home. I’d never been a particularly attentive driver, but that night I checked repeatedly in the rear view mirror and peered constantly about me to try and figure out if I was being followed, but I didn’t see anything, and so, taking a deep breath and shaking my head as though to free it from the memory of that strange experience, I walked in through the front door.

  “Àrtemis, it’s me.”

  “Hi,” replied my wife from inside. Her voice was calm.

  I joined her in the kitchen and found her busily preparing Greek meatballs. “Hello, darling, how are you?”

  “I’m fine. How are you? I heard about the accident.”

  I went white. We hadn’t spoken all afternoon, how could she know?

  “The accident?”

  ’Yes. Bruno told me that you knocked someone over this afternoon.”

  Ah, she’d spoken to Bruno.

  “Oh, it was nothing serious. A girl came shooting out into the road without looking and ran into me. But she was fine, luckily.”

  Art stared at me with those feline eyes of hers as though she wanted to penetrate my head. Was she trying to expose my half-truth? After a moment, she looked away and went back to preparing dinner. “Ok, just as well. I’m making biftekia, so I’ll need another half an hour.”

  “Fine, I’m in no rush.”

  “In the meantime, maybe you could finally have a look at that box of old junk that I put in your study a few days ago.”

  “Yes… excellent idea.”

  The box was on the carpet in the study, and was full of objects accumulated over the last forty years. Àrtemis said she had put it there a few days before, but I had no memory of the fact. Among the comic books, broken watches and other useless stuff there were also some old toys which I was very fond of. Àrtemis knew how much they meant to me, so finding them there, ready to be thrown away, annoyed me.

  There were soldiers with futuristic weapons and combat vehicles, transforming robots, a bag of Lego bricks and, finally, something that I had almost forgotten – something to which I had been deeply attached as a child: a toy Spider-Man with magnetic limbs.

  What a joy to see it again! I thought I’d lost it.

  As I looked at it, some strange kind of light flashed before my eyes, followed immediately by something like a frame from a film, filled with overlapping faces and places.

  This strange vision lasted a few moments, and then, from that confused, crowded image, a single distinct figure emerged. A face that was dear to me, but that I couldn’t quite identify. Someone with the features of a serene-looking old man, who was trying to tell me something. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I was struck by a symbol that appeared and disappeared on his face, a symbol exactly like the one used in alchemy to represent common salt or verdigris. A wheel with four spokes.

  I blinked quickly, the vision vanished and I found myself looking at the toy Spider-Man. I looked up and saw Àrtemis standing in the doorway, staring at me silently with a strange light in her eyes. “So? How’s it going?”

  “Fine… But there are a few things that I’d like to keep.”

  “Oh, I was sure there would be. I put them together with the other things because I thought maybe there’d be some you didn’t want anymore. I know you’re still a kid at heart.”

  “They’re my mementoes. Look, there’s my old Spider-Man. I thought I’d lost him.”

  “You only had to ask me. The problem is that you’re so messy.”

  “Yes, yes, ok. I’ll sort them out. Is dinner ready?”

  “Another twenty minutes for the meatballs,” she said, setting a dish with feta and olives on the desk, then suddenly rubbing herself against me languidly as she thrust into my mouth an olive that I had no choice but to swallow.

  “But I’ve brought you a snack. Do you want it, hmm? Do you want my little snack?”

  “Well… Yes—”

  Her passion took me by surprise. Had I been in a different state of mind I would have certainly abandoned myself to it without hesitation, but at that moment my emotions were in turmoil. Despite having initially decided to ignore them, Anna’s words had begun to burn in my brain, together with the enigmatic symbol which flashed before my eyes, and something about the taste of the olive made me wonder if I should swallow it. But as Àrtemis’s attentions became wilder and more intense, I found I could no longer resist. She pushed me onto the sofa, and almost aggressively unbuttoned my trousers. I took my time taking off her blouse, as I tried to bring my own excitement to a peak. When she was topless, she began caressing herself in an unusual, vaguely disturbing way.

  “Your wife, your partner, your house, your shop. It’s all fake.”

  The words seemed to explode inside my head, while Àrtemis’s hands and tongue were suddenly everywhere, enveloping me in a whirlwind of ravenous passion. Her movements were so sensual that my arousal increased dramatically, as did the deafening echo of Anna’s words.

  “It’s all fake …all fake …fake.”

  It was like a chant, rhythmically punctuated by the movements of my wife who was in the throes of a surprisingly maenad-like wave of passion, and in that moment I decided to take the initiative and be more daring. I tried to remember how it usually felt when we made love and whether this was her usual way of taking and giving pleasure, but my mind was a blur of images.

  I was sure of one thing, though: this ardour was unusual.

  “No, it can’t be… Àrt is gentler, more sensual… I know she is.”

  I decided to play her at her own game – I had to at least see how far I dared go. I raised myself to my feet, and, on her hands and knees, she began urging me to take her from behind. I obeyed, and her passion only increased until in the end I could no longer control myself.

  I exploded without being able to stop until, spent and exhausted, I fell heavily onto the divan. Naked, panting and wet, she stood up and stared at me. It was Àrtemis, yes, but as I looked at those eyes – the eyes of a hungry wolf – Anna’s words, which a few hours before had so offended me, took on a different meaning.

  But it only took a few hours for the thought to go completely from my head.

  2

  Operation Sunrise: The Wolf is Trapped

  From the testimony of Richard Douglas Morrison,

  CIA agent under the command of Allen Dulles

  Zurich, March 8, 1945 – Austin, Texas, 1976

  Austin, TX, 1976

  My name is Richard Douglas Morrison. Yes, I know, if they’d called me James instead of Richard I would have had the same name as Jim Morrison, the lead singer of The Doors who died a few years ago. But my name’s Richard, and I’m no singer – I’m a spy. An official one, of course, in the sense that I work for the CIA. In fact, I can consider myself one of its founders. Yep – until forty–five I was in the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services in Europe, and then when Truman created the CIA in forty–seven, I was transferred to Langley.

  It was in forty–five that I met Dulles, who was then director of the OSS in Europe and one of those who pushed for my going to Langley. God, what a man Dulles was! Nicknamed the ‘Master of Spies’, he looked like nothing more than some easy-going golfer, but the guy had more skeletons in his closet than an undertaker. He was, in a word, powerful. A man capable of unleashing a war out of nowhere and making it seem like something sacrosanct, or of forcing one of the most feared armies that Europe has ever seen to turn tail. Yes, I’m talking about the Krauts – the Nazis.

  Being a member of the OSS, in forty–five I took part in Operation Sunrise, of which Dulles was one of the protagonists. You only ever get to hear the most striking facts about any given war, and you’ll never get the real truth out of any of the history books, so there’s no point you going poking about looking for confirmation of what you’re about to read. This stuff is top secret. A dark chapter of
a war that was already a goddamn cesspool of unspeakable horrors. A chapter that was never put into writing in the files relating to the Operation Sunrise, the operation that marked the end of the Nazi occupation in Italy and that the US government exploited to gather information on something that had little or nothing to do with the war.

  Apparently.

  Believe it or not, I was in Zurich with Dulles that March of forty–five, while the bastard took down one of the big noises in Kraut espionage.

  I’ve enjoyed reconstructing what happened that eighth of March and turning it into a kind of story. That way, nobody can accuse me of anything. It’s just a story, right?

  *

  The two men stared at one another for a minute in total silence. The face of one was serious but relaxed, while the other was in visible torment. They were playing a terribly serious game which might prevent more bloodshed and destruction on Italian soil – a deadly game, which had now escaped the control of its main protagonists and been entrusted to the seemingly small pawns who, among other things, were trying to put an end to further suffering for millions of people.

  “General, I see that my request makes you uneasy,” said the serene-looking man, re-arranging his round spectacles on his nose and taking a puff on his pipe.

  The other continued to stare at his interlocutor, unable to speak. The tension, which had faded after the initial embarrassment, had grown again when the American had made his last request.

  “I repeat that what you are asking is impossible, Mr Dulles,” answered the general finally in his strongly accented English.

  Dulles remained calm, unflappable. He emptied his pipe of the tobacco which was now reduced to embers and began to clean it with care. “You see, general, as far as I’m concerned, this whole thing is a waste of time. If you’re here, it’s because I recognise your good faith and for me, what we’ve already agreed upon would be enough.” He examined his pipe and only when he was certain that it had been cleaned to his satisfaction did he return his gaze to the general. “However, although I do have some room for manoeuvre in this, I cannot decide autonomously to leave out one of the terms of the agreement. Especially one which is considered essential.”

  The general gathered his courage and tried to get his counterpart to reveal his hand.

  “I suspect that Churchill is behind this ultimatum, and it makes me think that I was right in considering his frequent – how to say? – communications deceptive. But I wouldn’t expect you Americans to throw away such an important agreement for a… a legend. You are too pragmatic.”

  Dulles rose to his feet without losing his temper, put his hands in his pockets and walked slowly to the door, then returned to the general and, without taking his eyes from him, placed his hands flat on the table and leant forward.

  “Churchill’s friendships are not our concern here, General Wolff, and if you consider it a legend, then you should have no problem giving it to us. You are betraying the Third Reich because you have realised that only by doing so can you prevent further deaths. And for your own benefit, of course. You have already decided, therefore, to put the lives of millions of people before the madness of Hitler. So what prevents you from agreeing to this request? As far as you’re concerned, it’s nothing but smoke.”

  Wolff hesitated.

  “General,” replied Dulles almost whispering, “Let me remind you that your people came into possession of this… thing via the betrayal of a pact which my superiors considered more important than me, you and any politician or soldier on earth. As regards the brotherhood, even the most fanatical of your colleagues vowed to respect it. Except one, that is. I understand that you do not want to endanger the lives of your soldiers, but let me underline that we are still at war, and whatever happens before the signing of the treaty of surrender will be considered a normal, albeit tragic, act of war. For my part, your betrayal will be limited – so to speak – to that upon which we have already agreed. This can be considered further evidence of good faith, which will remain between me and you. Neither the squad that will be chosen, nor anyone else involved in Operation Sunrise, nor history itself, will ever know where the tip-off came from.”

  Wolff was on the ropes. If he stubbornly refused to give Dulles what he wanted, Dulles would use his power to suspend negotiations and prolong the torment of Germany, which, thanks to Hitler’s reckless policies and the Allied offensive, was already in ruins. However, he knew that telling Dulles what he wanted to know meant sentencing to death some of his most loyal soldiers, young members of the SS who were in a secret hiding place known only to him. This made his torment even greater, because he could almost imagine the amazement of those young faces at the sight of American weapons. An amazement accompanied by the immediate realisation that their deaths had a name: Karl Friedrich Otto Wolff.

  3

  From Light to Darkness

  Events reconstructed by Lorenzo Aragon

  Naples, December, 2012

  That day had seemed to begin perfectly. I’d slept like a log until the beautiful winter sunlight had bathed the covers and gently awoken me.

  I took my time getting up, enjoying the warmth of the bed: it was only a few days until Christmas and outside the weather was bitterly cold, but the bright light hinted at a luminous, clear day of the kind we hadn’t had in a long time.

  “It’s going to be a magnificent winter solstice.”

  My wife was already up, but I was still sleepy, so I tried to put off the moment of actually getting up for as long as possible. It was only when the familiar, bewitching scent of coffee crept treacherously into my nostrils that I decided to head towards the kitchen.

  I found Àrtemis there by the stove and kissed her on the neck, while she was still intently stirring the coffee in the pot.

  “Hello darling – sleep well?”

  “Extremely well, I’d say, although to tell the truth, I’m still a bit sleepy.”

  My wife turned around and held out a cup of coffee under my nose, shaking her head.

  “The same old sleepyhead!” she said.

  I love winter – it’s my favourite season. The summer heat has always made me extremely uncomfortable, and I much prefer wrapping myself up for a freezing day to gasping in the noon sultriness.

  However, for a while now, strange nightmares – or, better, vividly coloured dreams – had disturbed my nights, though the memory of them almost always faded upon waking.

  In an attempt to keep my turbulent psyche a little more under control I’d started taking some pills, which I would have forgotten every morning if Àrtemis hadn’t been there to practically put them into my mouth.

  “Lorenzo, I don’t want you waking me up again tonight because you’ve been dreaming about spaceships made of pasta!” she told me that morning as she met me at the door with a glass of water and the pill.

  “Ah, so you think that it’s my love of food causing these dreams, do you? Hang on, though – I don’t remember practically anything, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t food I was dreaming about.”

  “Then you must have a lover called carbonara—”

  *

  I left the house smiling at Àrtemis’s joke and made my way to the garage. As I walked, though, and before stopping to pick up a newspaper, my thoughts returned to that night’s dream. My wife’s little jibe had brought a scrap of it back, and in that scrap there was no pasta dish, but a face.

  A woman’s face.

  Àrtemis had not been so far wrong after all.

  I tried to focus on the features, but all I could remember was the hair. I was absolutely certain that I had dreamt of a blonde woman.

  I put my dream aside for a moment and walked over to the news kiosk. “Good morning Fausto – the usual please.”

  Just as I was paying the newsagent, someone bumped into me, knocking the money out of my hand and onto the floor. “I’m very sorry,” said the woman who had walked into me as she crouched down to help me pick up the coins.

  “Plea
se, it’s fine.”

  She had a woollen hat pulled down over her forehead, from which a blonde ponytail emerged, and she wore large dark sunglasses. She lowered them quickly, allowing me to see her dazzling blue eyes, and when I met her gaze, my vision blurred for a few seconds and two words escaped my lips: “It’s you!”

  The girl put her sunglasses back on and disappeared without answering or giving me time to add more. I rose to my feet, looking after her, confused, and then turned to Fausto.

  He wore his usual smile and had my newspaper in his hand. “Here you are, Mr Aragona – have a good day.”

  “Yes, yes – you too Fausto,” I said, handing him the money. And then, before leaving, I added, “Have you ever seen her around here before?”

  “Who, Mr Aragona?”

  “What do you mean, ’who’? The girl who bumped into me just now.”

  “I didn’t see anyone, to tell you the truth.”

  “What? She almost knocked me over.”

  Fausto shrugged. “I’m sorry but there was nobody there, Mr Aragona. The only person to come here in the last few minutes has been you – there’ve been no other customers.”

  I stared at him for a few seconds then took my paper and left.

  *

  Despite the familiarity between us, I excluded the possibility that Fausto could actually be pulling my leg. But in that case, what had happened? Had I had a hallucination brought on by the memory of a dream? I shrugged and forgot about it until I reached the garage where, putting a hand in my pocket for the car keys, I found a small piece of crumpled paper.

  I opened it out and read it.

  Riviera Café, 11:30. Come alone and don’t speak to anyone about this note.

  I could not understand what it meant and particularly how it had ended up in my pocket.

  “Of course! The girl! So it wasn’t a hallucination.”